Jewish Identity

I was 11 or 12 years old when my school took us to the neighborhood holocaust museum (what, yours doesn’t have one?) The rabbis warned us that the museum curators might not have the same sensibilities that we enlightened religious people did, and therefore we might encounter some pictures of...

Torah! Oh Torah! It’s the absolute truthIt’s better than coke or ice cold vermouthThe Torah’s our guide to tell us wrongful from rightfulTo make the right choices, now ain’t that delightful?Because you can't ever just trust your own teensy brainTo make moral choices, that would be a strain Our purpose...

Cards against Humanity is one of my favorite games. It's funny, it's simple, and it's not very competitive. When it's my turn to judge, those who know me know that certain cards are automatic winners. Cards I deem so hilarious that everyone else can just give up and go home. Auschwitz....

She approaches, the wife of the president. Sherlon, her name is. Sherlon Goldfarbstein. "What a beautiful son you have," she exclaims, gesturing towards my daughter. She gestures enthusiastically towards my other daughter, thinking she’s my partner. “Such a beautiful son you've made.” Upon clarifying the second of her two mistakes, that my partner...

At this point, I have left both the religion and the nationalist views I was raised with. What follows is a short contemplation on  the similarities and differences between these two processes. My journey of leaving both was primarily an emotional one. The values and beliefs of Orthodox Judaism and...

Why must drag our next generation through the dregs of the holocaust? So that it doesn't happen again? Baloney. It's happening right now. It could happen again in a heartbeat. And if it happened to anyone else but your own ethnic kin, you'd be a lot less bothered. So let's...

I was contemplating the talking points I was fed as a child, around both nationalism and religion, and I believe the key feature of these narratives was oversimplification. The most salient example of these was the grouping of all Arabs and all Jews into two homogeneous masses. There was no...

With the help of AI, I am now able to attend to my true calling of being a children’s storybook author. This book is about pride. Jewish pride. The best kind.